1953 Jeep 475 Pickup
OK, this might be a slight case of cheating. Jeep, or in this case a Kaiser-Willys Jeep, wouldn’t come under Chrysler ownership until 1987 when Chrysler acquired the Jeep brand from AMC.
The image is of a 1953 Jeep 475, a one-ton, 4-wheel drive pickup that my uncle rebuilt as his tire shop’s gofer in 1965. The weight on the door states 3600 lbs (1633 kgs), which would have been a wet weight, as other sources give the weight as around 3300 lbs. Either way, this is very light for a one-ton, 4-wheel drive vehicle.
Originally the truck came with a 75 hp, L-head six sourced from Continental, hardly enough grunt to challenge the Dana 18 transfer case and Dana 53 rear end and Dana 25 front axle. The transmission was a Borg Warner T-90 three-speed. My uncle had other ideas for propulsion.
Plymouth 318 V-8
My uncle was a dyed-in-the-wool Mopar guy, so when he repowered the Jeep, in went a Plymouth 318 with a 2 bbl carb, rated at 230 hp @4400 rpm. He would have installed a 361 or 383 but those engines were too wide to fit in the Jeep’s engine bay. The running gear remained original and never complained. Since the engine still ran a generator, the 318 probably came from a 1960 or previous Plymouth.
So, many of you might be saying, No Mopar Trifecta! But I say not so! Remember the Dana drivetrain? Long time Mopar and Jeep supplier to this very day. Trifecta.
This was the hardest riding, hardest steering vehicle I have ever driven. The only thing that would make the rear end sag was a full load of split oak, which, of course, I had split on zero degree Illinois days, down to my tee shirt and still sweating. But the corn-fed Black Angus that we grilled over that oak in the evening was the best I’ve ever had.
Gold Jeep, Golden Commando, red meat. Awesome.
Uh…where’s the AMC part come in? Seems that era was just left in the dust.
You don’t say; but I’m guessing it’s now history. Too bad, because the Jeep Wrangler four would have been perfect in there. A little less power, maybe; but a whole lot more than the strangled flathead six. And lighter on the front end, which would have helped steering.
And that would have brought it all together…including the AMC-Chrysler link, since most of those Jeep fours were built under Chrysler ownership.
Yes, I thought I saw a wide-block there. That was probably plenty of engine for that Jeep.
The hard ride and heavy steering sounds like my 63 F100. Someone had put extra leaves in the springs and the steering was really heavy, perhaps due to the thing having radial tires on it. You didn’t drive that one so much as wrestle with it. After about an hour or two with it on a Saturday morning, I would park it and not care of I set foot in it again for another week or two. Maybe the kind of speed you could get out of that Jeep might have made my F100 a little more pleasant.
The starving one applauds your cheating Kevin. Any transgression that brings a jeep truck with an upgraded (but still simple) engine deserves that applause.
Love to have that parked in my driveway. Would even be happy with the original engine.
In the fall of 2000 my brother and I drove to a guy to have a look at a 1977 CJ7 he had for sale. He also had a Jeep Station Wagon from the fifties, seems to be the same base vehicle as this pick-up, say from the front bumper to the B-pillar. It came from the Swiss postal service if I recall correctly. All original and in a pretty good condition. Never saw one again, let alone I’ve ever seen this pick-up version here.
My brother bought the CJ7 and he restored it afterwards. The Jeep has its original AMC 304 V8 engine with a 3 speed manual.
Fellow that worked for my father had a 1948 or so Jeep wagon with the little four-banger engine. It felt surprisingly light on the road with quick steering that still wasn’t hard at low speeds. No acceleration of course, but it would eventually get down the road okay.
Not long after that I drove a later Jeep pickup with a 6 and 4wd: Totally different driving experience, everything heavy and slow enough to vitiate any increase in performance.